DC Statehood Green candidate, in routine review of votes after primary, uncovers discrepancy: only 89 votes recorded for 140 Statehood Green voters, with 51 votes apparently 'lost' - Reliability of certified results in Statehood Green primary for Ward 5 seat on City Council in question - 40% of Republican votes apparently lost from the Ward 5 vote count; Statehood Greens urge investigation by D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics

An investigation of voter rolls and votes in the September 12 primary election in Washington, D.C.'s Ward 5 has revealed unexplained irregularities in the race for the DC Statehood Green Party's nomination for the Ward 5 seat on City Council.

Philip Blair examined the primary results after he apparently lost the primary race to Carolyn Steptoe in a close 40-33 vote.

"In an effort to see if I had grounds for a challenge, I began the process of checking the pollbooks to see who actually signed in as a Statehood Green voter on election day," wrote Mr. Blair in an October 13, 2006 letter to the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics (BOEE). Links to Philip Blair's letters to the BOEE are appended below.

Mr. Blair discovered a significant discrepancy between the number of Statehood Green voters who signed in at the polls or submitted absentee ballots and the number of Statehood Green votes that were reported in the primary election results in many Ward 5 precincts.

"89 votes were recorded for 140 voters. 51 votes, many more than either candidate received, simply disappeared from the final count announced in the certified results," said Mr. Blair in his letter.

In every precinct but three, the number of Statehood Green voters who signed in or submitted absentee ballots exceeded the number of Statehood Green votes. In six precincts, there were more than twice as many signed-in voters as votes recorded.

"The problem is, in some precincts, extreme: in one case (Precinct 139) seven times more voters than votes and in another (Precinct 66) six times more."

Mr. Blair also noted that he found "significant discrepancies between the data from the pollbooks and data from the CD [version of the voter-rolls]. At least eight (and possibly nine or ten) Ward 5 Statehood Green voters are listed as having voted on the CD, but not in the pollbooks. And contrariwise, at least six and possibly seven voters are listed in the pollbooks but not in the CD."

In his letter, Philip Blair stressed the significance of the apparent irregularities in the Ward 5 primary:

"Since candidates and other interested parties must rely upon the information published by the BOEE in deciding whether to challenge results, and since there is such a narrow window of opportunity to successfully challenge results and make a difference in the declared winners of the elections, discrepancies of this order of magnitude are unacceptable.... In short, it is impossible to tell which candidate for Council in the Ward 5 DC Statehood Green Party primary had the larger number of votes, since so many of the votes were not counted and the reliability of the reported data is marred by inconsistencies. This undercount of votes could have affected not only my own contest, but also other primary contests in the Ward."

Mr. Blair concluded the letter with a call for "an immediate investigation of this situation."

Commenting on his discovery and his letter to the BOEE, Philip Blair said, "The Statehood Green Party is the canary in the coal-mine on voting issues here. Our numbers are small enough to permit the kind of line-by-line search of pollbooks that reveals situations like the ones documented in my complaints. We cannot let this issue go away unresolved; it is way more important that who won or lost our Ward 5 primary."

Mr. Blair also discovered major discrepancies in the Republican vote count: "Though the Republican primary results have not been scrutinized as closely as those for the Statehood-Green Party, our preliminary research shows the discrepancies there are just as serious."

In an October 19 letter to the BOEE, he wrote, "The CD version of the list of registered voters with voting histories indicates that 335 Republicans voted in their primary in Ward 5. The Board of Elections turnout figure is 202. Fully 40% of the Republican votes were lost from the count, if the CD data and the BOEE's turnout count are to be believed."

LINKS to Philip Blair's letters to the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics: